loading...
Canwest News Service
Ben Metcalfe was born in Winnipeg, Man., Oct. 31, 1919 and died Oct. 14, 2003
Metcalfe was a renowned Canadian journalist and author and a founder of Greenpeace.
He is credited with being among the first to try to push the emerging ecological movement into the mainstream, paying $4,000 in 1969 to have 12 billboards placed around the city that read: Ecology? Look it up! You're Involved.
Metcalfe was the first chairman of the Greenpeace Foundation after it changed its name from the Don't Make a Wave Committee following the 1971 voyage to Amchitka.
He was the elder, experienced journalist who taught Hunter and the other journalists how to how to write advocacy stories that the media would print.
In 1972, he and his wife, Dorothy, launched the Greenpeace campaign to stop French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. He played a pivotal role in getting nuclear testing on the agenda of the 1972 UN Environment meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, by lobbying delegates from Australia, New Zealand and other South Pacific nations affected by nuclear tests.
Metcalfe left active Greenpeace duty in 1974 and continued to work for both the CBC and The Province, retiring to his Shawnigan Lake home in 1995.
He suffered a heart attack there on Oct. 14, 2003.
Metcalfe is survived by his wife, three daughters, one son and 10 grandchildren.
